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Mr Tuttle
History He looks after the toyshop in the town, ‘Tuttle’s Toys’. He’s quite creepy and spends a lot of his time watching the other characters. His manner is an awkward combination of outward self-restraint and inner urgency. He bites his lip and his body language is hunched and defensive. He sometimes walks with a limp. Appearance He wears a waistcoat, old-fashioned glasses, a bow tie and a neat side parting, glasses, often bloodied. Loop - Basic - Opens the toyshop, OCD sorting of objects (Toy Shop) - Greets Conrad (outside Toy Shop) - Buys shot in saloon barand talks awkwardly to barman (Horse & Stars) - Watches Dwayne seduce Fayeand Mary, 'claims' he can dance too (Toy Shop doorway) - Sells doll to Lila (outside Toy Shop) - 1:1* - Watches Faye leave Studio 5 (Toy Shop) - Paints heart for her (Toy Shop) - Barman buys baseball (Toy Shop) - Seamstress delivers a bottle of red dye (or blood?) (Toy Shop) - Goes to the Psychic shop and leaves a note (Psychic Shop) - Romola asks for directions,sees toy car, directs her to The Grocer (Toy Shop) - Meets Harry Greener to give him doll for Faye but Harry disappears (outside Toy Shop) - Tuttle tries to paint doll (Mary) but the paint is ash (Toy Shop) - Harry Greener drunk outside. Crosses him off 'list' - Picks up paint to graffiti the wall (Toy Shop) - Watches Mary pass on her way to the hoedown (Toy Shop) - Watches hoedown through the saddlery (in front of Saddlery) - Graffitis wall (Motel end wall) - Chased by guard through town (Main Street) - Washes hands and face in fountain (Fountain) - Watches Miguel and Faye from behind the fountain (Fountain) - Does rope dance with Badlands Jack (Chesspiece Room) - Ends with rope around Tuttle’s neck (Chesspiece Room) - Tries to clean himself up,shaken after rope dance (Toy Shop) - Writes goodbye in blood and closes Store (Toy Shop) - Takes pill/sweet and dies on bed (Motel Bedroom) *1:1 repeated 2 or 3 times in loop Loop - Extended He opens up his shop and obsessively sorts out the products on the shelves. There’s a rocking horse in the middle of his window display. He spends a lot of time monitoring and guiding events, and hurrying others along to meet their appointments. He often checks his watch when he sees another character. He makes notes in a little black book and records what happens outside his shop window. The book is marked with the word ‘PRIVATE’. There are daubings and drawings in red, heavy black scrawls, pages torn out, cabalistic symbols and references to phases of the moon. He mentions Faye Greener repeatedly, on whom he has an unrequited crush. There's a comment about her father, Harry, being an alcoholic and dire grumblings about Dwayne, ‘If that cowboy knew what I'm capable of, he'd stick his head in the sand and keep it there’. There’s also mention of William and Mary. There's a page about Romola, who he recognises as confused and lost, ‘IT’S NOT HER FAULT’. There's mention of the Psychic, ‘The only person who understands me’. He says, ‘She's been missing for weeks’. One note says, ‘WHY ARE THEY ALL SO IGNORANT?’ Mr Tuttle walks to the ‘Horse & Stars Tavern’. He greets Conrad and buys a shot at the bar, talking awkwardly to The Barman. He watches Dwayne seduce Mary and Faye, and claims that he can dance just as well. He’s in love with Faye and hates Dwayne because of this. He’s besotted, but unsurprisingly she’s not interested. In his shop, he paints something on a piece of paper and shows it to an audience member. He pulls out a card that reads ‘Fish’ and looks to the woman for a response. He smirks in approval and offers her a jelly bean. ‘Take two,’ he says, ‘Some of them are good and some of them are bad.’ Lila walks past his shop looking lost. He leaves his counter and greets her in the street, ‘Welcome to Hollywood!’ She buys a toy jester from him for a dollar. He watches Faye leave Studio 5 and paints a heart for her in his shop. He adds the letters ‘F G + J T’, for ‘Faye Greener + Jasper Tuttle’. The Seamstress brings him a bottle of blood and he pays her a dollar. 'I want more of this next time', he demands. 'I want more of this next time' she imitates and waves the banknote in his face. He takes the bottle into his shop and places it next to a toy car on the counter. He paints the car and then paints a red circle around it. He places a picture of the moon next to the car and gets out his notepad. Concentrating hard, he writes ‘Red Moon, R M, Romola Martin’. He looks at one of his previous notes that reads ‘She dies in an accident’ and adds ‘Can she be saved?’ He pulls out a pack of Tarot cards. He looks at them and tries to warn Conrad about something, but Conrad is not in the mood and pins him to a wall. Mr Tuttle enters the deserted Psychic’s Shop. He leaves a note under two shot glasses and carefully aligns them. It reads, ‘IT’S HAPPENING AGAIN. WHERE ARE YOU? IT’S BEEN WEEKS. FIND ME. HELP ME. JASPER’. Romola approaches him to ask for directions and he torments her by playing with a toy car. He directs her to The Grocer and she heads off. He goes back inside his shop to play with his toy and he drives it off the counter, simulating a crash. He paints a picture of the ‘Red Moon’, and then violently tears it up. He meets Harry Greener and asks after Faye. He says that he’s got just the thing to cheer her up and goes into his shop to get a doll in a box. The doll is called ‘I LOVE MARIE’ and is creepy and under-lit. When he comes out he sees that Harry has disappeared and so he crosses him off a list. He calls the doll ‘Mary’ and fetches some paint to make her lips redder. He mumbles ‘Mary’ to himself and is surprised to find that the paint pot contains ash. He pours it onto a piece of paper which sticks to some parts, making a glyph of three interlinked circles. He spreads it around, blackening his hand. He repeatedly folds and unfolds a bloodstained napkin. He watches the hoedown from in front of the Saddlery and when the dancing starts, he’s upset not to be there. He shouts sarcastically to no’one in particular, ‘Oh look, a party! Thank you for inviting!’ He’s painfully aware that he’s an outsider in the town. He takes a jar of paint and starts to sneak through the town. He passes the broken down Studebaker and stops at the side of the motel. He paints graffiti in red paint in foot-high letters on the wall, sometimes smearing the paint by hand. The messages vary, but tend to be biblical and apocalyptic. Examples include, ‘AND BEHOLD SMOKE’, ‘BLOOD ON THE MOON’ and ‘THE SMOKE COMES FROM THE LAND’. Before he can finish, The Gatekeeper catches him in the act and chases him. Mr Tuttle washes his hands in the fountain and puts away his can of paint. He starts to paint a crescent moon in his shop. He looks up and stares at an audience member. He shoos everyone else out saying, ‘The shop is closed’, and locks himself in with the woman. A group of onlookers gather at the window to see what’s happening so Mr Tuttle tells the woman to hide behind the counter with him. 1:1 in Toy Shop As they crouch on the floor, he tells her, ‘Terrible things are happening, I’ve seen it. Will you help me?’ The woman nods and he takes her by the hands and walks backwards through a hatch at the back of his shop, still crouching. He stops briefly to bewail the state of things, ‘The world out there is so unfair, so full of people and animals and blood and sweat and piss and shit, but in here we’re safe, just you and me’. Eventually they enter a small room with straw on the floor. It’s pitch black except for a dim red bulb hanging from the ceiling. Mr Tuttle sits the woman under the bulb and starts jabbering excitedly about the end of the world. He holds her hands and then her face. He says, ‘In the beginning, men and animals were equal. Sometimes we served them and sometimes they served us. Men and animals were interchangeable, but at some point man stopped listening to nature. We thought ourselves better than them, we became their masters, but we didn’t understand that man was still animal.’ He talks about the red moon and the bulb glows brighter. Then he describes the end of the world and it goes off completely, leaving them both in darkness. She can hear him running around her until suddenly the light comes back on and he’s right in front of her face. He repeats the same phrase over and over - ‘Spark to ember, ember to flame, flame to inferno, the red moon must reign’. He dips his hand into a vat of thick dark liquid and smears it on her hand and up her arm. He takes her hand again and leads her to the side of the room where the wall is covered in drawings, daubings and crazy messages. He places her hand on the wall and holds it there, ‘Sacrifices have to be made.’ Finally, he pushes her out of a side door and says 'I want you to run as fast as you can.’ She stumbles back into the town square. Mr Tuttle’s rants make reference to the end of the world as described in the Book of Revelation, Chapter 6, Verses 12-14 – ‘When he opened the sixth seal, I looked, and behold, there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as sackcloth, the full moon became like blood, and the stars of the sky fell to the earth as the fig tree sheds its winter fruit when shaken by a gale. The sky vanished like a scroll that is being rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place’. Mr Tuttle visits the diner and pretends to make a phone call while surreptitiously watching Drugstore Girl through the glass door. As he leaves, she asks him if he wants to accompany her later to the wrap party, and he accepts. He watches Miguel and Faye as they walk past and he crawls around the fountain to stay out of their sight. As his loop progresses, he gets more and more desperate. There’s a suggestion that Mr Tuttle has inherited his story from his father, but he can't recall how or why. He’s aware that he's living inside a recurring nightmare and he’s desperately trying to break the loop. He sees Badlands Jack near the photography stand trying to hang himself. He rushes in to stop him, but Jack is determined to put an end to his miserable life. They struggle together in a room filled with chess pieces, both of them holding the rope. When the wrestling ends, the rope is around Mr Tuttle’s neck. He’s badly shaken and he walks to the fountain to clean himself. He’s frightened and alone and desperate. He’s seen the red moon and he knows what’s coming. Final Show Trivia Mr Tuttle was added to the cast in September 2013, a few months into the run. His book includes pictures of Romulus and Remus being suckled by the Capitoline Wolf. It has an image of Fuseli's ‘The Nightmare’ and a picture of Jesus being tempted by Satan. There are ominous references to black and white duality, circles within circles, lunar phases, the ‘four elements’ and alchemical symbols. There's a glued-in passage taken from a textbook about sleep. There’s a note about trying alcohol and not liking it. One of the notes says, ‘I can't remember yesterday or any day other than today’. There are notes about Dante's ‘Seven Circles of Hell’, images of classical chimera and a paragraph from Jonathan Black’s ‘The Secret History of the World’. He mentions ‘HEADACHES’ and ‘LYCANTHROPY’. In the potion room in the desert, there’s a paper that also mentions Lycanthropy. The mythical condition of ‘Lycanthropy’ was a supernatural affliction in which humans were said to shape-shift into wolves. It’s likely that this is a nod to Woyzeck’s demented ramblings, ‘Stab the she wolf-dead. Stab. The She-Wolf. Dead’. In modern terms, ‘Clinical Lycanthropy’ is a rare psychiatric syndrome where the sufferer believes he has transformed into an animal. In his book, Mr Tuttle records doctor’s visits where he's prescribed medication to deal with his animalistic tendencies. He may also be suffering from ‘Cotard’s Syndrome’, a condition where the sufferer thinks that they’re living in a dream or dead. He’s obsessed with signs, symbols and stars, and what they might mean. On the wall of the Psychic’s Shop is a poster of a tree. On the branches are a series of Tarot cards above the names of different characters. William and Wendy are linked to ‘The Hanged Man’. Mary and Marshall are ‘The Lovers’, Dwayne and Dolores are ‘The Emporer’ and ‘The Empress’, Andy and Andrea are ‘Strength’ and Mr Stanford is ‘The Devil’. Mr Tuttle is also preoccupied with the colour red. He sometimes drinks from a little pot of red paint. Quotes "Spark to ember, ember to flame, flame to inferno, the red moon must reign." ReferencesCategory:Characters